Many of you have asked for activities for contractions.
I've looked at the California English Language Arts
standards and have come to the conclusion that I'd
better honor your requests. I'll need feedback on the
new things I'm adding (carl1404@msn.com).
Are the directions clear, etc.? Do you have other
suggestions or ideas for format? I will include
worksheets, word cards for sorting, cloze activities,
cut and paste matching, and context clues in an effort
to address different grade levels and skills. Many of my
university students have been talking about the focus on
differentiated instruction, so that's what I'm going to
try to do.

I plan to use a little cowgirl with a lasso to represent
bringing two words together to create one new one. I've
also written several songs and a little reading book to
go with the study of contractions and the apostrophe.

Enjoy!

Cherry Carl

Contraction Action(Tune: The Hokey Pokey)
Cherry Carl

You pop some letters out!

To put apostrophes in!

You pop some letters out!

That's the way you must begin.

To do contraction action is as easy as can be!

Come on and dance with me! Oh, Yeah!

Note: Knowing where to put the apostrophe in
contractions has always been a problem for many
students. In my experience, young writers seems to have
difficulty understanding this process and the apostrophe
just lands anywhere within the word! Hopefully, this
little ditty will help children internalize the rule. I
visualize doing a circle or line dance with this song to
reinforce the concept of replacing omitted letters with
the apostrophe when making contractions. Another way to
use this song as a line dance would be to provide large
letter and apostrophe cards to a group of students. Call
out a contraction, and students with the appropriate
letter cards spell the two words that match that
contraction. During the song, the correct letter(s)
should "pop" out of line and the apostrophe should join
the line-up in that letter's place. The two words then
slide together to create the contraction.

This colorful book provides
twenty pages of practice reading simple sentences with
apostrophes. For a follow up activity, have your
students find all of the contractions and record them
and/or write out the two words that make up the
contractions. They may also write and illustrate their
own little books about their favorite foods and the
favorites of their classmates, using as many
contractions as they can. (Option: Assign a different
contraction to each student for a class book about
apostrophes.)